THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

Ernest  Dawson 


PRESENTED  BY 

Robert  B.   Campbell 


^ 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 


THE 

READING  PUBLIC 

BY 

MacGREGOR  JENKINS 


BOSTON   AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN    COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  I9I4,  BY  MACGREGOR  JENKINS 
ALL   RIGHTS  RESERVED 

Fuhlished  October  iqi4 


J-f)   fv 


TO 
BLISS  PERRY 

ABLE  EDITOR,  ACCOMPLISHED  WRITER 

KNOVVER  AND  LOVER  OF  THE 

MAN  IN  THE  STREET 


THE   READING  PUBLIC 

IN  the  first  place  let  it  be  under- 
stood  that  I  am  not  a  man  of 
letters.  Just  what  relation  I  bear  to 
the  literary  activities  of  my  associates 
it  would  be  hard  to  say.  As  nearly 
as  I  can  diagnose  the  situation  I 
represent  to  them,  with  more  or  less 
accuracy,  the  "average"  reader  of 
books  and  magazines.  I  seem  to  stand 
in  their  minds  for  that  nebulous  per- 
sonage, "  the  man  in  the  street."  For 
this  reason  a  doubtful  manuscript,  an 
untried  author,  or  new  editorial  policy 
is  tried  on  me.  I  am,  in  fact,  the  lit- 
erary dog  of  the  office. 

This  exalted  position  is  not  without 
its  compensations.  It  enables  me  to 
speak  freely  as  one  without  authority. 


56GG57 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

I  am  an  utterly  irresponsible  person; 
consequently  I  can  give  free  rein  to 
valueless  opinions  with  the  cheerful 
assurance  that  no  one  will  attach  any 
importance  to  them. 

What  I  say,  then,  about  the  mak- 
ing and  reading  of  books  and  maga- 
zines must  be  regarded  as  nothing 
more  than  the  random  reflections  of 
"the  man  in  the  street,"  and  it  is  from 
this  standpoint  that  I  discuss  the  au- 
gust body  of  people  known  as  the 
"  reading  public." 

This  group  of  people  constitute  an 
interesting  phenomenon,  but  they  are 
more  than  that.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  the  publisher  and  the  author, 
they  are  the  ultimate  consumer.  The 
lot  of  the  ultimate  consumer  for  the 
most  part  is  not  a  happy  one,  but  in 
this  one  connection,  at  least,  his  con- 

2 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

dition  is  not  desperate.  He  can  stop 
buying  books  and  magazines ;  that  is, 
he  can  theoretically;  some  of  us  can- 
not, some  of  us  are  as  helpless  to 
pass  a  bookstore  as  the  most  besotted 
drunkard  is  to  veer  from  the  swinging 
doors  of  his  favorite  saloon.  But  there 
is  no  question  that  most  of  us  could 
give  up  buying  half  the  books  we  buy 
if  we  made  what  the  social  workers 
call  "  an  earnest  effort  for  self-better- 
ment." 

To  this  end  we  are  being  helped 
by  the  soaring  prices  of  the  things  we 
have  to  buy,  and  right  here  comes  in 
one  of  the  interesting  things  about 
the  reading  public.  For  as  the  neces- 
sity not  to  buy  books  increases,  the 
author  and  publisher  redouble  their 
blandishments  to  keep  us  in  line. 

So  the  reading  public,  unlike  the 
3 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

beef,  shoe,  flour,  and  clothes -buying 
pubHc,  is  a  petted  and  pampered  dar- 
ling, and  is  lured  to  the  satisfaction  of 
its  desires  by  all  the  charms  and 
graces  known  to  the  ingenuity  of  sci- 
entific salesmanship,  and  is  not  aban- 
doned to  the  curt  take-it-or-leave-it 
attitude  of  the  Beef  Trust. 

This  reading  public  is  composed  of 
many  varieties  of  readers  of  widely 
differing  tastes,  but  in  general  they 
can  be  divided  into  two  pretty  clearly 
defined  groups,  —  those  who  pur- 
chase and  read  books,  and  a  vastly 
larger  group  who  confine  their  liter- 
ary activities  to  the  consumption  of 
magazines.  For  the  orderly  discussion 
of  our  subject  let  us  treat  the  two 
groups  separately. 

Yieldins:  once  more  to  the  scien- 
tific  impulse,  we  can  divide  readers 

4 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

of  books  into  three  roughly  defined 
classes  that  will  help  us  to  continue 
our  discussion  in  an  orderly  fashion. 
They  are:  — 

The  Sponge-Reader. 

The  Sieve-Reader. 

The  Duck-Back-Reader. 
These  classes  form  a  pyramid,  the 
apex  the  sponge-reader,  and  the  base 
the  duck-back-reader — between  them 
the  great  class  of  sieve-readers. 

The  sponge-reader  absorbs  what  he 
reads.  He  is  not  as  a  rule  a  gregari- 
ous or  an  attractive  person,  he  is  apt 
to  have  a  little  too  much  information 
for  human  nature's  daily  needs;  but 
he  is  the  stuff  that  scholars  are  made 
of  and  is  the  highest  type  of  reader,  if 
reading  be  regarded  as  anything  but 
a  time-killing  operation.  This  group 
is  small  in  number,  and  almost  en- 

5 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

tirely  ignored  by  authors  and  publish- 
ers, save  the  most  enlightened,  for  the 
sponge-reader  reads  fewer  and  bettei 
books  than  his  fellows. 

The  sieve-reader  is  more  catholic 
in  his  tastes,  and  as  he  absorbs  nothing 
an  almost  infinite  amount  of  printed 
matter  can  pass  through  his  intellectual 
organism  without  occasioning  distress. 
His  desire  to  read  is  abnormal.  This 
desire  springs  from  obscure  sources, 
but  its  manifestations  are  obvious.  He 
becomes  a  walking  directory  of  the 
titles  and  authors  of  hundreds  of  books, 
and  on  a  pinch  can  present  a  very  cred- 
itable appearance  in  literary  circles. 
He  loves  the  shallows  and  dabbles 
gracefully  in  them.  He  executes  mar- 
vels of  grace  and  agility  on  the  thinnest 
of  literary  ice  and  comes  safe  ashore. 
In  the  company  of  sponge-readers  he 

6 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

is  apt  to  be  quiet  and  deferential,  recog- 
nizing that  in  that  course  lies  his  only 
chance  to  escape  detection,  shrewdly 
guessing  that  profound  silence  can 
often  produce  the  effect  of  even  pro- 
founder  wisdom.  But  get  him  among 
his  inferiors,  let  him  find  himself  by 
any  chance  in  company  with  a  group 
of  common  or  garden  duck-back- 
readers  and  he  is  in  his  glory. 

He  bristles  with  facts,  with  titles, 
with  authors'  names.  He  can  rattle 
off  the  entire  output  of  a  popular  au- 
thor; he  retails  the  gossip  from  the 
literary  journals,  and  incidentally  al- 
ludes to  obscure  and  half-forgotten 
earlier  performances.  He  thrills,  he 
irritates,  he  bewilders.  He  is  fond  of 
relating  with  astonishing  fidelity  to 
detail  the  involved  plot  of  a  recent 
best-seller.  I  once  rode  from  Worces- 

7 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

ter  to  Boston  with  the  most  pro- 
nounced type  of  this  specimen  I  ever 
encountered.  He  happened  to  choose 
Mr.  Nicholson's  "  House  of  a  Thou- 
sand Candles,"  and  from  the  shadow 
of  the  Worcester  Station  to  his  de- 
parture into  the  bleak  twilight  of  the 
Back  Bay  he  gave  me  the  entire  nar- 
rative. It  was  a  stupendous  feat,  and 
as  I  left  him  enveloped  in  the  gloom 
of  that  underground  chamber  of  hor- 
rors he  solved  the  mystery.  "I  sell 
suspenders  and  read  a  book  a  day  on 
the  train."  It  is  obvious  that  the  sieve- 
reader  is  the  darling  of  the  publisher's 
heart.  It  is  he  who  keeps  the  best- 
sellers selling. 

The  third  and  by  far  the  largest 
group  of  readers  is  the  base  of  our 
pyramid,  the  old  reliable  duck-back. 
Unlike  the  sponge-reader  he  does  not 

8 


THE   READING  PUBLIC 

absorb;  unlike  the  sieve-reader  there 
is  no  easy  access  to  or  egress  from  his 
intellectual  citadel.  In  fact  his  read- 
ing has  absolutely  no  effect  upon  him 
at  all,  except  to  employ  his  hands  to 
hold  his  book  and  his  eyes  to  read  the 
words. 

As  a  rule  this  type  of  reader  chooses 
newspapers  and  magazines ;  but  many 
read  books.  I  have  in  mind  one  of 
these  readers,  a  very  good  friend  of 
mine  and  a  man  of  sense  and  charac- 
ter. I  have  studied  his  reading  habits 
for  years  on  the  train,  in  his  house, 
and  at  his  club.  It  is  simplicity  it- 
self. Purchase  a  paper,  fold  it  con- 
veniently, and  begin  at  the  top  of  the 
first  left-hand  column,  read  to  the  bot- 
tom, and  continue  at  the  top  of  the 
next.  If  a  particular  narrative  breaks 
off  at  the  bottom  of  the  first  column 

9 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

and  you  find  yourself  referred  to  col- 
umn 3,  page  6,  ignore  it.  Quietly  be- 
gin at  the  top  of  the  second  column 
on  something  fresh ;  it  will  all  come  out 
right  in  the  end.  You  will  ultimately 
get  it  all  and  that  is  what  you  want. 

This  method  has  many  advantages. 
It  lends  itself  to  absolute  physical  and 
mental  rest.  It  uses  up  a  prodigious 
amount  of  time  that  would  otherwise 
hang  heavy  on  your  hands.  It  is  ideal 
for  the  commuter;  in  fact  I  fancy  that 
the  commuting  habit  is  largely  respon- 
sible for  the  enormous  increase  in  the 
ranks  of  the  duck-backs. 

They  read  their  magazines  and 
books  with  the  same  singleness  of 
purpose  and  achieve  the  same  results, 
—  a  quiet  hour  of  physical  repose 
with  no  exactions  on  the  brain.  A 
real   duck-back    remembers    nothing 

10 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

that  he  reads  —  titles,  authors,  pub- 
lishers, mean  nothing;  but  he  goes 
on  buying  and  reading,  reading  and 
buying,  to  the  infinite  delight  and 
profit  of  author  and  publisher  alike. 

These  gentlemen  who  sit  at  the  lit- 
erary throttle  are  keen  observers,  and 
they  study  their  market  like  the  saga- 
cious business  men  that  they  are.  For 
the  duck-back-reader  they  have  con- 
trived an  elaborate  and  smooth  work- 
ing machine  known  as  the  subscrip- 
tion book  business.  They  employ 
armies  of  canvassers,  they  print  tons 
of  circulars,  and  make  prodigious  sales 
of  books  which  are  never  read,  but 
which  ornament  the  center-tables  and 
book-shelves  in  the  houses  of  their  self- 
satisfied  owners. 

A  friend  of  mine  once  bought  at  a 
large  price  an  elaborate  set  of  books 

II 


THE    READING  PUBLIC 

in  which  he  took  infinite  pride.  A  year 
or  two  after  their  purchase  I  happened 
to  be  in  his  library, — that  was  what 
the  room  was  called,  —  and  having  an 
idle  five  minutes,  and  being  attracted 
by  the  glitter  of  the  volumes,  I  ven- 
tured to  satisfy  my  curiosity  in  regard 
to  their  contents.  I  took  one  from  the 
shelf.  I  could  not  open  it.  It  was  as 
firmly  sealed  as  if  set  with  the  most 
elaborate  timelock.  I  put  it  back  and 
took  down  another  with  the  same  re- 
sult ;  still  a  third  with  no  better  suc- 
cess. Then  I  realized  what  had  hap- 
pened. In  the  hasty  manufacture  of 
the  volumes  the  gilt  edges  had  been 
improperly  applied,  and  instead  of 
yielding  easily  to  the  opening  of  the 
volumes  had  made  a  solid  coating  of 
glue  and  gilding  powder  which  made 
each  book  as  solid  as  a  brick. 

12 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

I  heard  my  host  coming  and  hastily 
slipped  the  volume  into  place.  In  he 
came  aglow  with  outdoor  exercise  and 
beaming  with  pride  and  delight  in  his 
home.  "  Nice  books,  are  n't  they  ?  "  he 
said,  as  he  hurried  me  to  his  waiting 
motor.  "  I  tell  you  a  fellow  can't  get 
along  without  books."  "  Some  cannot," 
I  answered  evasively. 

This  type  of  book-buyer  exists  the 
country  over,  and  while  they  do  not 
betray  the  most  exacting  literary  taste, 
their  purchases  are  inspired  by  an 
honest  desire  to  adorn  their  homes 
and  to  appear  well  before  their  neigh- 
bors ;  and  who  will  say  that  these  mo- 
tives are  not  commendable  ? 

I  knew  a  man  once  who  amassed  a 
fortune  by  studying  the  needs  of  the 
rural  duck-back.  To  be  sure,  the  books 
he   published  were   not   beautiful  as 

13 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

works  of  art,  or  inspiring  as  works  of 
literature,  but  they  served  their  pur- 
pose and  they  certainly  never  did  any 
harm.  Most  of  his  publications  were 
of  a  semi-religious  character,  were 
printed  on  wood-pulp  paper,  and  orna- 
mented with  the  cheapest  wood-cut 
illustrations.  His  genius  lay  in  mak- 
ing just  what  his  public  wanted,  and 
his  unerring  judgment  in  the  choice 
of  titles  was  little  short  of  wonderful. 
He  had  a  book  on  the  press  at  the 
time  I  met  him.  He  explained  that 
he  had  long  confined  himself  to  reli- 
gious books,  but  there  was  an  uneasy 
stirring  of  the  scientific  spirit  and  he 
felt  that  it  had  spread  even  to  his  cross- 
roads customers.  So  he  had  antici- 
pated changed  conditions  and  was 
putting  out  a  scientific  book.  He 
called  it  "  The  Wonders  of  Nature." 

14 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

The  cover  bore  a  bewilderinsr  mixture 
of  volcanoes  and  rainbows,  elephants 
and  boa-constrictors,  tigers  and  birds- 
of-paradise.  The  introduction  was  writ- 
ten by  the  Professor  of  Natural  Science 
in  a  rural  academy,  and  with  it  the 
volume  was  ready  to  stand  the  test  of 
changed  conditions. 

To  his  amazement  the  book  did  not 
sell.  He  could  hardly  persuade  him- 
self that  he  had  missed  a  trick,  but  the 
reports  of  his  agents  were  not  to  be 
argued  away, —  the  book  did  not  sell. 
The  truth  was  that  while  the  cross- 
roads buyer  was  beginning  to  taste  the 
forbidden  fruit  of  scientific  thought,  he 
was  still  far  too  wise  to  flaunt  his  back- 
sliding by  putting  on  his  center-table 
anything  except  the  long-accepted  vol- 
umes of  his  fathers. 

The  canny  publisher  took  counsel 
15 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

with  his  experience  and  concluded  that 
like  other  great  men  he  was  ahead  of 
his  time.  The  books  were  all  called  in, 
the  covers  and  introduction  removed, 
and  when  they  reappeared  they  bore 
the  same  resplendent  confusion  of  flora 
and  fauna  on  the  cover,  but  no  longer 
was  the  title  "  The  Wonders  of  Na- 
ture " ;  it  was  now,  in  its  changed  and 
chastened  condition,  "  The  Architec- 
ture of  God."  The  preface,  so  elabo- 
rately prepared  by  the  budding  scien- 
tist, was  gone  and  in  its  place  appeared 
another  by  the  Reverend  Mr.  Blank, 
of  Bucksport,  Maine ! 

There  was  no  trouble  with  sales 
now.  The  book  was  bought  by  thou- 
sands and  all  went  merry  as  a  wedding 
bell.  The  duck-back-reader  had  stood 
to  his  guns  and  won  a  famous  victory. 

For  the  most  part,  however,  the 
i6 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

sponge -reader  alone,  of  the  three 
classes  of  readers  we  are  discussing, 
has  much  to  say  as  to  what  literary 
provender  is  provided  for  him.  The 
sponge-reader  has  less  to  fear  than  his 
brothers  from  the  makers  and  writers 
of  worthless  books,  for  he  does  decide 
in  a  measure  what  he  will  and  what 
he  will  not  read,  and  it  is  to  him  that 
the  author  of  honest  work  must  look 
for  an  audience. 

I  once  had  charge  of  the  stock  room 
of  a  large  publishing  house,  and  it  was 
interesting  to  watch  the  piles  of  books 
dwindle.  The  progress  of  a  real  reader 
from  bookstore  to  bookstore  could  be 
noted. 

I  grew  to  have  a  real  affection  for 
the  neglected  books.  The  little  piles 
seemed  to  shrink  into  the  corners  of 
the  bins  as  if  ashamed  and  a  bit  lonely. 

17 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

The  fives  and  the  tens  looked  so  piti- 
ful beside  the  thousands — great  heaps 
of  good  sellers  resplendent  in  crimson 
and  gold. 

I  remember  one  little  pile  of  slender 
brown  volumes  which  I  never  dis- 
turbed. I  knew  nothing  of  the  author 
except  that  he  wrote  verse,  and  this 
little  book  was  his  literary  output.  His 
gentle  life  had  long  since  closed.  Few 
recalled  him  and  fewer  knew  his  book. 
One  day  a  miracle  happened.  I  was 
told  to  deliver  one  copy  of  this  little 
book  to  a  local  bookstore.  A  half-hour 
passed  and  another  was  ordered  for  a 
second  dealer.  Later  still  a  third  little 
volume  rose  up,  and  shaking  the  dust 
from  its  cover  went  out  into  the  wide 
world.  I  guessed  the  truth.  There  was 
no  great  revival  of  interest  in  this 
gentle  singer.  It  was  only  a  sponge- 
rs 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

reader  making  his  toilsome  way  from 
shop  to  shop  trying  to  find  a  book  he 
really  wanted. 

The  sponge-reader  is  known  in  the 
book  trade  as  a  man  of  independent 
notions  in  regard  to  the  books  he  will 
or  will  not  read. 

The  sieve-reader  is  the  creature  of 
the  publisher  and  commercial  author. 
He  may  flatter  himself  he  has  literary 
taste,  but  he  has  not.  His  reading  is 
decided  for  him.  He  makes  the  "  best 
sellers,"  for  he  buys  what  he  is  told  to 
buy,  and  while  he  affects  tremendous 
erudition  he  really  is  the  publisher's 
plaything.  In  fact  he  was  brought  into 
being  by  the  publisher.  The  process 
is  very  simple.  He  is  provided  with 
books  which  make  reading  the  easiest 
thing  in  the  world.  Then  reading  is 
made  fashionable  to  the  same  degree 

19 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

that  phonographs  and  lodge  member- 
ships are.  His  love  of  gossip  and  inti- 
mate nothings  is  created  and  pandered 
to  by  the  so-called  "  literary  "  papers. 
His  taste  is  not  exacting,  it  is  easy  to 
provide  him  with  what  he  wants. 

There  are  countless  stories  told  of 
the  genesis  of  best-sellers:  many,  no 
doubt, quite  without  foundation  in  fact; 
but  enough  is  known  to  show  that  many 
of  them  were  the  result  of  a  painstak- 
ing effort  by  author  and  publisher  to 
provide  the  sieve-reader  with  the  easi- 
est possible  reading. 

There  is  one  story  to  the  effect  that 
a  wa2:er  was  made  between  two  men 
that  one  of  them  could  produce  a 
best-seller  in  a  stipulated  period  of 
time.  This  he  did  by  carefully  analyz- 
ing a  dozen  or  more  such  books  and 
finding  out  just  how  they  were  put 

20 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

together.  So  enamored  of  the  game 
did  he  become  that  he  produced  half 
a  dozen. 

These  various  yarns  must  be  ac- 
cepted, however,  with  a  bit  of  salt,  but 
it  is  quite  evident  that  a  good  many 
very  popular  books  of  late  years  have 
been  written  more  with  an  eye  to 
meeting  popular  demand  than  to  the 
production  of  a  really  good  piece  of 
work.  Witness  the  countless  inferior 
books  which  follow  in  the  wake  of  a 
successful  one.  After  such  a  great  suc- 
cess, for  instance,  as  "  David  Harum," 
the  bookstalls  were  flooded  with  the 
type  of  story  soon  known  in  the  trade 
as  the  "  by-gosh  story."  If  the  gossip 
of  the  bookstores  can  be  believed,  one 
at  least  of  these  stories  was  a  machine- 
made  product.  A  short  story  by  an 
unsuccessful  writer  which  had  been 

21 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

hawked  about  magazine  offices  for 
months  was  padded  out  to  the  pro- 
portions of  a  full-length  story.  The 
author  worked  while  the  publisher 
held  the  stop-watch  and  the  story  was 
produced  in  the  stipulated  time. 

I  recall  once  making  a  visit  to  an 
inland  city  where  I  called  upon  two 
friends  who  for  some  months  had  been 
engaged  in  the  daring  attempt  to  pub- 
lish really  good  books  in  a  small  way. 
My  arrival  was  inopportune,  as  I  ap- 
peared at  their  office  at  just  the  mo- 
ment the  sheriff  was  departing  with 
their  last  chair.  There  were,  however, 
empty  packing-cases,  and  on  these  we 
sat  while  we  discussed  the  vicissitudes 
of  a  publishing  career. 

There  were  five  of  us,  the  two  part- 
ners, calm  and  undisturbed  by  the 
disaster  which  had  overtaken  them, 

22 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

and  two  authors  who  had,  perhaps, 
called  in  a  faint  hope  that  they  might 
secure  something  on  account  of  long 
overdue  royalties,  but  who  stayed  to 
sympathize  and  to  help.  I  completed 
the  circle,  and  being  the  only  mem- 
ber of  the  party  who  had  any  real 
money  I  invited  my  friends  to  lunch. 
Warmed  by  the  genial  influence  of  a 
friendly  meal  together,  the  future  be- 
gan to  take  on  a  rosier  tint.  Plans 
were  formulated.  I  recall  at  this 
luncheon  that  one  of  the  two  authors 
gave  expression  to  a  new  and  interest- 
ing theory  of  literary  production.  He 
remarked  that  in  his  wanderings  about 
the  city  he  had  observed  that  the 
largest  groups  of  idlers  stood  as  a  rule 
in  front  of  the  stores  displaying  pic- 
tures in  their  windows,  and  of  two 
given  picture-stores  the  larger  group 

23 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

was  invariably  in  front  of  the  store  in 
which  the  largest  number  of  pictures 
of  beautiful  young  women  was  dis- 
played. From  this  he  justly  reasoned 
that  the  world  was  more  interested  in 
feminine  youth  and  beauty  than  any- 
thing else.  He  announced  that  he 
was  about  to  return  to  his  humble 
garret  and  produce  a  story  governed 
by  this  great  literary  principle.  He 
determined  to  cast  to  the  winds  all 
notions  of  probability  or  possibility 
and  of  literary  conventions.  He  pro- 
posed to  produce  a  book  which  would 
be  a  whole  gallery  of  alluring  pictures 
of  the  same  radiant  young  woman. 

The  second  writer,  not  to  be  out- 
done in  optimism  and  cheerfulness, 
announced  his  intention  to  construct 
either  a  book  or  a  comic  opera  from  a 
series  of  cartoons  which  he  had  once 

24 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

drawn  and  unsuccessfully  offered  for 
sale  to  a  number  of  metropolitan 
dailies.  Both  of  these  men  kept  their 
word.  The  radiant  heroine  appeared 
before  many  months,  and  for  a  very 
considerable  time  brought  her  cre- 
ator handsome  royalties.  The  choice 
of  the  second  man  ultimately  was  in 
favor  of  the  comic  opera,  and  this  was 
forthwith  produced  with  enormous 
success.  This  was  many  years  ago, 
but  the  production  is  still  on  the 
American  stage,  and  I  am  not  at  all 
sure  that  our  children's  children  will 
not  see  it  in  some  modified  form. 

In  these  instances  one  of  the  pro- 
ductions, at  least,  was  designed  along 
scientific  lines  to  meet  the  taste  of 
the  sieve-reader  at  the  moment. 

I  once  knew  a  man  who  had  so 
perfectly  gauged  the  taste  of  this  great 

25 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

class  of  readers  that  he  used  his  skill 
to  pay  for  practically  all  the  luxuries 
he  enjoyed.  Having  convinced  him- 
self that  there  always  had  been  and 
always  would  be  an  unfailing  demand 
for  a  certain  type  of  story,  my  friend 
addressed  himself  to  the  problem  of 
producing  them  just  as  rapidly  as  his 
professional  duties  would  permit. 

The  chosen  type  of  story  was  the 
well-known  "  Beautiful -Girl -Mill -Op- 
erative and  Handsome- Son -of -the 
Owner  "  type.  He  found  that  by  ex- 
treme diligence  he  could  turn  out 
four  a  year.  They  were  of  consider- 
able length,  and  they  were  written 
under  a  variety  of  feminine  noms  de 
plu7ne.  He  did  not  concern  himself 
with  any  questions  of  copyright  or 
royalty,  but  having  found  his  market 
made  an  out-and-out  cash  sale  of  his 

26 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

product  and  dismissed  it  from  his 
mind.  The  proceeds  from  this  liter- 
ary activity  he  devoted  to  frequent 
trips  to  New  York,  during  which  he 
and  his  wife  reveled  in  the  theater 
and  the  opera  and  other  luxuries 
bought  with  his  ill-gotten  gains. 

These  men  are  doing  honest  work, 
however,  and,  while  they  write  for  an 
entirely  unintelligent  public,  they  do 
their  public  no  special  harm,  and  are 
not  to  be  confounded  with  the  liter- 
ary fakirs  who  abound  to-day  as  they 
always  have  and  always  will. 

But  enough  of  the  sieve-reader  and 
sieve-reading.  Board  any  gorgeously 
appointed  '*  limited  "  train,  sit  in  any 
one  of  the  plush-covered  air-tight  cars, 
and  look  about  3^ou.  Gaze  on  your 
fellow  beings  employing  a  few  hours 
of  enforced  leisure  in  literary  pursuits. 

27 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

Look  at  the  books  they  are  reading, 
and  then  raise  your  eyes  to  the  faces 
above  the  books.  Do  such  books  make 
such  faces,  or  do  such  faces  demand 
such  books?  I  do  not  know,  but  I  do 
know  that  one  such  experience  makes 
me  want  to  be  a  Hottentot  quite 
ignorant  of  the  ABC. 

I  recall  that  on  one  such  trip  I  de- 
cided to  subject  myself  to  the  spell  of 
a  best-seller  vociferously  recommended 
by  the  newsboy  on  the  train.  For  over 
an  hour  I  struggled  manfully  to  inter- 
est myself  in  a  machine-made  story. 
Finally  I  gave  it  up,  and  for  the  only 
time,  I  think,  in  my  life  I  abandoned 
a  half-read  book.  I  left  it  in  my  chair 
to  be  picked  up  by  some  one  who  had 
not  been  unfortunate  enough  to  ac- 
quire, quite  unconsciously,  perhaps, 
some  of  the  characteristics  of  a  sponge- 

28 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

reader.  To  this  day  the  incident  recurs 
to  me,  and  I  have  as  guilty  a  feeling 
as  if  I  had  abandoned  a  baby  in  that 
train. 

The  duck-back-reader  is  by  far  the 
least  picturesque  of  the  three  groups, 
but  he  has,  after  all,  a  certain  charm 
for  the  sympathetic  observer.  He  is 
the  placid  hippopotamus  of  the  liter- 
ary zoo,  munching  his  food  in  stolid 
contentment  without  an  emotion,  with- 
out a  sensation  of  any  kind.  But  he  is 
honest,  —  he  makes  no  pretensions,  he 
knows  no  affectations.  Why  he  reads 
is  a  mystery,  but  read  he  does,  or  the 
publishers  would  go  out  of  business, 
that  is,  many  of  them  would.  A  few 
of  them  really  rely  on  the  discrimin- 
ating reader  for  their  support.  It  is 
a  wonder  that  he  can  be  found, 
for  he   is  a   shy  bird  who  has  been 

29    - 


THE   READING  PUBLIC 

cheated  so  often  that  the  lure  of  the 
advertisement  is  lost  upon  him. 

I  met  a  real  reader  once,  and  the 
experience  had  as  far-reaching  an  ef- 
fect on  my  intellectual  development 
as  anything  that  ever  happened  to  me. 
It  was  in  this  wise :  I  once  found  my- 
self late  at  night  the  sole  occupant  of 
the  smoking-compartment  of  a  sleep- 
ing-car. Presently  a  man  slouched  into 
the  compartment  and  threw  himself 
wearily  into  the  seat  opposite  me.  Be- 
ing constitutionally  unable  to  remain 
long  in  the  presence  of  a  fellow  being 
without  talking  to  him,  we  drifted  into 
conversation,  and  by  some  curious 
chance  we  spoke  of  reading.  The  mo- 
ment the  subject  was  introduced,  my 
unknown  friend  became  interested. 
He  confided  to  me  that  he  was  a 
track-inspector  whose  work  called  him 

30 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

from  home  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and 
night,  and  consequently  he  had  found 
little  time  for  literary  pursuits.  He  had 
confined  himself,  so  he  said,  to  the 
reading  of  one  author  whose  books  he 
read  over  and  over  again,  never  weary- 
ing of  them  and  always  finding  in  them 
new  interest  and  inspiration.  In  an- 
swer to  my  inquiry  he  told  me  that 
this  one  author  was  Victor  Hugo.  "I 
shall  get  off  at  the  next  station,"  he 
said,  "  and  make  my  way  home.  I  will 
find  a  lamp  burning  in  the  kitchen, 
my  slippers  by  the  stove,  and  my  book 
face  down  on  the  table  where  I  left  it 
early  this  morning."  For  the  remain- 
ing half-hour  of  our  interview  he  talked 
to  me  of  Victor  Hugo  in  a  way  which 
convinced  me  of  the  wisdom  of  con- 
fining your  reading  to  one  author,  pro- 
vided, of  course,  he  be  big  enough. 

31 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

That  incident  taught  me  a  great 
deal.  It  taught  me  that  the  most  deadly 
and  dangerous  thing  in  the  world 
is  intellectual  insincerity.  It  is  bad 
enough  to  be  insincere  with  other 
people,  but  to  try  to  cheat  yourself  is 
both  stupid  and  immoral. 

Real  reading  is  a  mighty  serious 
matter,  but  it  can  be  made  interesting 
and  inspiring.  Think  for  a  moment 
what  life  would  be  if  no  one  of  us  could 
read,  and  then  think  for  a  moment 
how  most  of  us  employ  the  God-given 
gift  of  communion  with  other  minds 
through  the  printed  page.  I  think  if 
we  tabulated  the  results  of  our  last 
year's  reading  it  would  not  make  an 
impressive  showing. 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  I  make 
no  plea  for  the  "  high-brow  "  book  be- 
cause it  is  "  high-brow."    I   hold  no 

32 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

brief  for  the  dull  and  pedantic.  I  only 
ask  that  I  get  something  more  out  of 
reading  than  physical  rest  or  the  mild 
tickling  of  my  intellectual  palate. 

A  farmer  told  me  once  he  liked  a 
certain  book  because  there  was  some- 
thing "into  it."  What  does  it  mean? 
Such  a  book  is  the  Book  of  Job.  Such 
a  book  is  "Alice  in  Wonderland." 
The  book  that  lasts  has  something 
"  into  it." 

Most  of  us  who  have  much  to  do 
with  the  making  or  selling  or  reading 
of  books  acquire  a  very  superior  atti- 
tude of  mind  toward  the  books  loved 
and  read  by  persons  a  little  less  so- 
phisticated than  ourselves.  It  is  the 
easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  brand  as 
inferior  a  book  which  may  not  happen 
to  appeal  to  us,  but  which  has  held  a 
great  audience  through  many  years  of 

33 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

changing  literary  fashions.  But,  after 
all,  a  book  which  persists  and  retains 
in  every  generation  its  hold  upon  a 
larse  number  of  readers  must  have  in- 
herently  great  qualities. 

There  are  hundreds  of  such  books 
being  read  to  tatters  in  our  public  li- 
braries which  are  practically  unknown 
in  what  are,  perhaps  erroneously,  called 
more  "  cultivated  circles." 

I  recall  being  asked  once  by  a  little 
serving-maid  in  my  home  if  she  might 
have  access  to  my  limited  library. 
Scenting  an  opportunity  for  literary 
experimentation,  I  gladly  gave  permis- 
sion, though  I  am  free  to  confess  that 
the  library  contained  a  number  of  vol- 
umes desi2:ned  for  readers  of  some- 
what  more  mature  mind.  I  did  not 
feel  that  she  could  come  to  any  harm, 
because  I  was  positive  that  the  vol- 

34 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

umes  which  she  would  better  not  read 
she  would  not  find  interesting.  For 
several  days  I  watched  her  tentative 
nibblings  at  unfamiliar  fruit,  noticed 
this  or  that  modern  novel  taken  away, 
only  to  be  replaced  within  a  few  hours. 
Finally,  one  day  I  passed  through  the 
room  where  she  was  seated  and  my  at- 
tention was  attracted  by  mufHed  sobs. 
Glancing  over  her  shoulder  as  I  passed, 
I  was  amused  to  see  that  she  was  hud- 
dled in  her  chair  crying  her  heart  out 
and  having  a  perfectly  lovely  time 
reading  "  Queechy." 

I  have  no  doubt  that  few,  if  any,  of 
that  extremely  small  portion  of  the 
reading  public  whose  eye  will  ever  fall 
upon  this  page  have  ever  read  this 
book.  If  so,  they  have  probably  read 
it  only  to  scorn  it;  yet  it  is  a  book 
that  always  has  kept  its  place,  and  it 

35 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

must  be  that  it  possesses  some  real 
quality  to  have  been  the  final  selec- 
tion of  this  roving,  inquisitive  little 
mind. 

It  is  very  easy  to  classify  the  readers 
of  books,  but  like  all  generalizations 
such  a  classification  is  only  half  true. 
There  are  a  great  many  people  of  sense 
who  have  bad  reading  habits,  and  no 
one  to  correct  them  now  that  the  day 
of  real  literary  criticism  has  past.  If 
all  the  people  who  have  literary  taste 
would  exercise  it,  the  ranks  of  the 
sponge-reader  would  increase  enor- 
mously. 

There  always  will  be  the  unworthy 
book,  just  as  there  always  will  be  de- 
based forms  of  expression  in  every 
art,  but  why  people  of  sense  should 
encourage  them  is  a  mystery. 

There  has  been,  since  man  began 
36 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

to  reason,  a  question  unsettled  and 
still  open  to  debate,  "Which  came 
first,  the  first  hen  or  the  first  egg  ? " 
So  there  is  the  question,  "  Do  books 
make  readers'  appetites,  or  do  appe- 
tites for  special  types  of  books  create 
those  types  ? " 

Let  us  look  back  a  little.  Some  of 
us  remember  "  Oueechy."  All  of  us 
remember  the  melting  heroine. 

Then  came  the  romantic  novel. 
Then  came  the  historical  novel.  These 
were  followed  by  the  political  novel. 
Now  we  are  wading  through  a  swamp 
of  financial  and  political  stories  with  a 
mixture  of  bloodshed  and  twentieth- 
century  swashbuckling. 

One  day  I  found  myself  seated  in 
a  train  beside  a  friend  of  mine  who  is 
a  confirmed  sieve-reader.  After  we 
had  exchanged  a  few  commonplaces 

37 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

on  business  and  the  weather,  I  retired 
behind  my  evening  paper.  My  friend 
drew  from  his  pocket  a  copy  of  his 
favorite  periodical.  Before  he  opened 
it,  I  said,  "  Wait  a  minute,  let  me  see 
if  I  cannot  tell  you  exactly  what  you 
are  going  to  find  in  this  week's  issue. 
Just  what  the  stories  will  be  called,  I 
do  not  know,  but  I  can  name  with 
considerable  accuracy  the  illustrations 
which  will  accompany  them.  You  will 
find  at  least  four  illustrations  in  which 
a  man  or  a  woman  will  be  flourishing 
a  revolver.  You  will  find  two  illustra- 
tions in  which  a  stock-ticker  will  fig- 
ure. There  will  be,  at  least,  two  groups 
of  struggling  Chinamen  on  the  slant- 
ing deck  of  a  sailing-vessel.  There 
will  be  an  indefinite  number  of  illus- 
trations depicting  very  long  girls  and 


longer  noblemen." 


38 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

We  opened  the  paper  and  found 
that  my  prophecy  was  in  the  main  cor- 
rect. I  had  overestimated  the  week's 
production  of  revolvers,  as  there  were 
only  three,  but  the  stock-tickers  and 
the  girls  and  the  noblemen  were  there. 
The  only  inaccuracy  was  that  the 
struggling  figures  on  the  vessel's  deck 
this  week  proved  to  be  of  Latin  ex- 
traction rather  than  Asiatic. 

This  is  the  provender  which  is  be- 
ing provided  for  the  sieve-reader.  Not 
that  he  likes  it  particularly,  but  he  is 
being  educated  in  the  belief  that  he  is 
a  robust,  virile,  "  red-blooded "  crea- 
ture, and  to  this  end  is  being  assidu- 
ously supplied  with  stories  of  specula- 
tion, murder,  and  court  intrigue.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  he  does  not  care  a  fig 
for  any  of  these  things,  but,  being  a 
perfectly  obliging  person,  he  permits 

39 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

the  publishers  to  provide  for  him  what 
is  most  convenient  at  the  moment. 

I  have  spoken  of  a  story  written  on 
a  wager.  I  have  spoken  of  a  story 
written  around  "  a  radiant  heroine  " ; 
but  that  is  not  the  whole  of  the  pic- 
ture. With  all  their  weaknesses  and 
vanities  there  are  a  lot  of  sincere  men 
and  women  writing  to-day.  They  are 
trying,  among  other  things,  to  inter- 
pret life,  to  bring  about  reforms,  and 
to  show  some  of  our  national  weak- 
nesses. Many  of  them  fail  because 
they  are  dull,  untruthful,  or  pedantic. 
But  a  goodly  number  succeed  because 
they  make  an  honest  and  direct  ap- 
peal to  the  real  fundamental  humanity 
in  their  readers. 

It  seems  to  me  to  be  important  for 
any  person  of  intelligence  to  consider 
what  his  attitude   should  be  toward 

40 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

literature.  I  do  not  mean  by  litera- 
ture so-called  "high-brow  stuff,"  pe- 
dantic preaching,  and  books  about 
books  or  about  men  who  wrote  books. 
Nor  do  I  mean  the  endless  discussion 
of  the  intricacies  of  literary  art.  I 
would  not  have  the  remotest  interest 
in  a  six-hundred  page  volume  on  ut 
with  the  ablative  in  Plautus.  This  to 
my  humble  way  of  thinking  is  not  lit- 
erature; it  is  chemistry  or  higher  math- 
ematics. 

I  mean  by  literature,  at  least  I 
think  I  mean,  that  it  is  after  all  only 
a  form  of  expression,  an  interpretation 
of  the  phenomena  of  human  existence, 
the  painting  of  pictures  of  life.  His- 
tory, biography,  romance,  poetry,  and 
humor  all  do  this.  The  trick  is  to 
know  which  is  which.  I  know  of  no 
way  better  than  to  go  back  to  the  old 

41 


THE   READING  PUBLIC 

definition  and  cling  to  the  book  with 
"  something  into  it." 

I  think  every  intelhgent  person 
ought  to  elect  himself  into  one  of  the 
three  classes  we  have  been  discussing. 
If  he  be  a  duck-back,  let  him  remain 
so  if  he  must.  If  he  be  a  sieve,  let 
him  try  to  be  as  inoffensive  a  sieve  as 
possible.  If  he  really  gets  something 
out  of  his  reading,  let  him  rejoice  and 
give  thanks. 

What  should  we  expect  to  get  from 
our  reading?  I  am  enough  of  a  Phi- 
listine to  believe  that  the  least  impor- 
tant thing  to  strive  for  is  instruction. 
The  accumulation  of  facts  seems  to 
me  an  extraordinary  waste  of  time 
when  life  is  so  short  and  there  is  so 
much  that  is  more  worth  while.  Why 
not  try  to  have  our  reading  give  us  a 
little  more  human  sympathy  for  our 

42 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

fellow  beings,  a  little  wider  horizon  t^e 
our  own  little  life,  a  little  more  love 
for  the  other  fellow,  and  incidentally 
as  much  amusement  as  we  can  derive 
from  it? 

We  are  all  engaged  in  the  interest- 
ing experience  of  living,  wise  and  fool- 
ish alike,  and  it  would  seem  that  each 
of  us  could  sustain  a  much  more  nor- 
mal relation  to  life  if  we  acquired 
an  ever  so  shadowy  historical  back- 
ground, some  general  knowledge  of 
present  conditions,  and  possibly  some 
faint  idealism.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
the  joy  of  living  would  be  enormously 
increased  if  we  read  wisely. 

It  may  seem  very  presuming  for  a* 
layman  to  attempt  to  prescribe  for 
present-day  literary  ills,  but  I  am 
tempted  to  do  so. 

In  the  first  place,  in  this  connection, 
43 


THE   READING  PUBLIC 

if  I  were  a  woman,  I  should  demand 
among  other  rights  the  return  of  my 
literary  heritage.  The  women  buy  ten 
books  to-day  where  the  men  buy  one. 
I  should  repudiate  in  no  uncertain 
voice  the  kind  of  thing  that  is  pro- 
vided for  my  special  benefit.  I  should 
demand  emancipation  from  the  so- 
called  women's  publications,  with  all 
their  tawdry  make-believe  and  literary 
cant,  with  all  their  pretty  little  literary 
paper  dolls  and  their  pseudo-scientific 
nonsense.  I  should  realize  that  all 
this  stuff  with  its  sickening  sentiment 
and  doubtful  sex -consciousness  is 
vastly  more  dangerous  to  our  daugh- 
ter's mental  and  moral  integrity  than 
many  robust  writers  from  whom  she 
is  shielded.  Having  secured  my  free- 
dom, as  many  have,  I  should  use  it  to 
get  the  very  best  out  of  life. 

44 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

At  the  best  we  can  only  touch  life 
physically  at  a  very  few  points.  All 
other  contact  must  come  through  good 
talk  and  good  reading.  We  choose  our 
friends,  why  not  our  books. 

Looking  on  life,  after  all,  in  its  final 
analysis  as  a  purely  social  affair, —  I 
mean  purely  a  question  of  our  relation 
to  our  fellow  beings,  and  a  right  ad- 
justment of  our  conflicting  claims, — 
I  should  put  first  in  importance  a  sym- 
pathetic understanding  of  my  fellow 
men.  History,  biography,  personal  rem- 
iniscence, and  some  fiction  will  help 
us  do  this.  Never  mind  the  dates, 
never  mind  who  fought  or  won  or  lost 
the  Punic  Wars  (I  am  sure  I  have  not 
the  faintest  idea),  but  hold  fast  to  the 
truth  that  our  problems  are  not  new 
problems ;  they  are  as  old  as  man. 
Even  the  Phoenicians  struggled  with 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

the  high  cost  of  living.  History  read 
in  this  spirit  has  enormous  rewards  in 
interest  and  humor.  Fiction  can  help 
you  know  a  little  about  life  of  to-day, 
but  be  sure  that  it  deals  with  a  phase 
of  life  that  has  real  significance  and  is 
not  the  highly  colored  imaginings  of 
some  social  parasite. 

Of  poetry  each  must  judge  for  him- 
self. But  as  man  does  not  live  by  bread 
alone,  so  the  mind  needs  some  ideal- 
ism, and  poetry  ought  to  give  it.  Read 
it  if  you  can,  but  for  Heaven's  sake, 
do  not  pretend  to  like  it  if  you  do  not. 

And  humor;  above  all,  let  us  not 
forget  humor.  It  is  the  salt  of  life ;  it 
is  the  one  thing  that  keeps  us  sane. 
Don  the  cap  and  bells  at  pleasure  and 
refresh  your  souls.  We  can  learn  a 
great  deal  in  very  pleasant  fashion 
from  the  jesters.    They  are  the  only 

46 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

people  who  really  prick  the  bubblej 
of  our  vanity  in  a  pleasant  and  pain, 
less  fashion.  You  can  get  an  amazing 
amount  of  history  out  of  TroUope  and 
Mark  Twain,  philosophy  from  Lewis 
Carroll,  and  politics  from  the  incom- 
parable Dooley ;  and  I  know  no  liter- 
ary criticism  equal  to  some  of  J.  K. 
Stephen's  estimates  of  writers,  he  who 
wrote  the  famous 

"  When  the  Rudyards  cease  from  Kipling 
And  the  Haggards  ride  no  more  " ; 

or  — 

"  Two  voices  are  there  :  one  is  of  the  deep ;  .  .  . 
And  one  is  of  an  old  half-witted  sheep 
Which  bleats  articulate  monotony,  .  .  . 
And,  Wordsworth,  both  are  thine,"  etc. 

When  we  think  of  the  tons  of  infe- 
rior books  which  we,  the  reading  pub- 
lic, devour  year  in  and  year  out,  it 
would  seem  as  if  we  were  in  a  rather 

47 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

bad  way.  But  let  us  not  despair.  We 
are  not  utterly  unregenerate  and  lost. 
We,  like  every  other  mass  of  human 
beings,  have  a  substratum  of  surpris- 
ingly sound  common  sense.  We  do 
like  good  things,  —  witness  the  avidity 
with  which  we  buy  the  good,  the  whole- 
some, the  sweet  and  unaffected.  What 
mountains  of  "  Mrs.  Wiggs  of  the  Cab- 
bage Patch  "  and  "  The  Birds'  Christ- 
mas Carol "  and  "  The  Lady  of  the 
Decoration  "  we  have  purchased.  Only 
we  do  not  stand  by  our  guns  like  the 
duck-back.  We  run  after  strange  gods 
and  infinitely  stranger  goddesses.  We 
tolerate,  if  we  do  not  worship,  the 
Mary  McLeans,  the  Baroness  This  or 
That,  the  —  but  I  promised  to  name 
no  names. 

If  we  stand  up  in  our  boots  and  say, 
"  We,  the  reading  public,  in  conven- 

48 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

tion  assembled,  do  hereby  demand  our 
inalienable  right  to  the  best  in  letters," 
we  shall  get  it,  and  not  only  shall  we 
profit  enormously,  but  we  shall  be 
called  blessed  even  to  the  third  and 
fourth  generation. 

And  it  would  seem  as  if  this  happy 
day  were  really  coming;  for  with  all 
their  defects  the  magazines  are  edu- 
cating a  lot  of  people  in  the  art  of 
reading,  and  a  few  of  them  will  ulti- 
mately crave  better  and  better  literary 
provender,  and  so  the  ranks  of  the 
real  readers  will  be  slowly  and  pain- 
fully recruited. 

But  in  the  mean  time  the  sieve  and 
the  duck-back  are  coming  into  their 
own  more  than  ever  before.  Not  con- 
tent to  allow  them  to  remain  the  pri- 
vate prey  of  the  commercial  book 
publisher,  the  magazines  have  made  a 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

frantic  and  fairly  successful  effort  to 
prevent  their  development  into  real 
readers.  This  has  been  accomplished 
in  various  ways.  In  the  first  place,  the 
numerical  strength  of  the  reading  pub- 
lic has  been  vastly  increased  until  now 
nearly  every  human  being  with  eyes 
to  see  reads  at  least  one  magazine,  and 
frequently  a  dozen.  This  newly  cre- 
ated reader  is  kept  as  much  as  possi- 
ble in  ignorance  of  better  things,  and 
then,  lest  he  feebly  try  to  free  himself 
from  the  shackles  of  the  "popular," 
he  is  told  that  "  popularity  "  is  the  final 
test  of  excellence.  He  is  solemnly  in- 
formed that  muck-raking  makes  for 
good  citizenship,  that  the  sensational 
is  the  virile,  and  often  that  the  obscene 
is  in  its  final  analysis  educational.  So 
he  is  frequently  content  to  remain 
where  he  is  and  to  wallow  in  the  pop- 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

ular  under  the  impression  that  what 
makes  his  reading  so  easy  really  edu- 
cates and  uplifts. 

This  enormous  number  of  people, 
either  kept  in  intellectual  bondage  by 
such  specious  arguments,  or  blindly 
rebelling  and  groping  their  way  to 
better  things,  is  the  really  significant 
element  in  the  intellectual  life  of  our 
country  to-day. 

The  hope  of  the  future  is  the  one- 
hundredth  man  who  emerges.  And 
emerge  he  does,  for  never  before  have 
good  books  and  magazines  been  sought 
as  now. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  study  this 
spectacle  from  the  viewpoint  of  the 
magazine  publisher,  even  if  our  de- 
ductions must  of  necessity  be  based 
on  the  happenings  in  one  magazine 
office. 

51 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

In  my  perusals  of  many  learned 
manuscripts  I  have  frequently  been 
struck  with  the  free  use  of  statistics 
by  writers  of  all  degrees  of  promi- 
nence. The  secret  seems  to  be  that 
their  use  always  lends  an  air  of  pro- 
fundity to  their  utterances,  and  they 
are  also  the  most  easily  procurable 
things  in  the  world.  Let  us  by  all 
means  begin  with  some. 

How  many  magazine  readers,  I  won- 
der, realize  the  number  of  periodicals 
poured  out  annually  upon  the  Ameri- 
can reading  public  ?  There  are  over 
three  thousand  monthly  publications 
in  this  country,  and  over  fifteen  thou- 
sand publications  of  all  kinds.  Cheer- 
ing figures  to  paper  manufacturers  and 
to  authors,  but  forbidding  to  any  one 
who  contemplates  starting  a  new  pe- 
riodical venture. 

52 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

Of  this  vast  number,  however,  there 
are  comparatively  few  of  general  in- 
terest. A  scant  dozen  would  cover  the 
monthly  periodicals  familiar  to  most 
magazine  readers.  This  dozen  can 
again  be  divided  into  two  groups  about 
equal  in  size,  one  representing  the  pe- 
riodicals published  with  some  serious 
purpose  in  view,  and  the  other  those 
which  are  conducted  purely  as  money- 
making  ventures. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  there  are 
some  periodicals  of  general  circulation 
whose  publishers  care  more  for  the 
service  they  can  render  to  American 
life  and  literature  than  for  the  profits 
they  make. 

I  once  asked  the  owner  of  a  very 
flourishing  popular  magazine,  who  was 
editing  his  periodical.  He  answered 
with  evident  pride,  "  I  have  no  editor. 

53 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

My  magazine  is  a  business  proposi- 
tion." Unfortunately  I  can  speak  only 
of  magazines  which  have  editors. 

There  is  a  good  deal  said  about  the 
"editorial  policy"  of  various  maga- 
zines, and  each  of  them  has  a  distinct 
character  of  its  own,  but  it  is  doubt- 
ful if  a  single  magazine  published  to- 
day has  any  very  definite  editorial 
policy. 

Any  publication  in  course  of  time 
builds  up  traditions  of  its  own,  and 
finds  its  own  particular  field;  but  few, 
if  any,  are  conducted  by  rule-of-thumb 
methods.  In  the  old  days  Robert 
Bonner  had  a  few  simple  rules  for 
the  editorial  conduct  of  the  "  New 
York  Ledo:er."  No  horse  could  trot 
under  three  minutes;  no  character 
ever  smoked  or  drank,  much  less 
•swore;  divorce  was  never  mentioned; 

54 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

and  the  curtain  always  fell  on  romances 
before  the  lovers  exchanged  a  single 
kiss. 

The  application  of  somewhat  simi- 
lar rules  might  benefit  current  litera- 
ture not  a  little,  but  I  doubt  if  even 
in  the  conduct  of  the  most  exquisitely 
edited  women's  publications  there  are 
any  hard-and-fast  rules. 

No,  the  magazines  that  have  sur- 
vived the  fearful  competition  of  the 
last  ten  years  have  done  so  by  the  sim- 
ple process  of  remaining  in  the  field 
which  they  have  preempted  and  by 
having  in  the  editorial  chair  a  man 
who  can  find  in  that  field  fresh  and 
invitinsf  material  for  his  readers.    De- 

O 

spite  the  magazines  that  are  "  business 
propositions,"  this  brings  us  to  the 
very  evident  fact  that  the  editor  is  the 
most  important  element  in  the  success 

55 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

of  a  magazine,  —  really  everything 
depends  upon  him.  There  is  really 
such  a  thing  as  "  editorial  instinct."  It 
is  not,  however,  exactly  what  a  young 
man  of  my  acquaintance  thought  it 
was. 

This  young  man  had  recently  be- 
come the  editor  of  a  very  successful 
woman's  publication.  On  the  occasion 
of  my  first  visit  to  him,  I  was  con- 
ducted through  a  labyrinth  of  outer 
offices  resplendent  with  Grand  Rapids 
furniture,  plaster  casts,  and  rubber 
plants,  and  ushered  into  his  presence. 
He  greeted  me  with  that  curious  com- 
bination  of  cordiality  and  condescen- 
sion with  which  a  New  York  business 
man  always  greets  a  visitor  from  Bos- 
ton, and  we  talked  of  many  things. 
My  attention  was  attracted  by  a  pile 
of  small  pasteboard  boxes  on  the  top 

56 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

of  his  desk,  and  I  made  bold  to  in- 
quire as  to  their  contents.  "  Those," 
he  said,  —  "  oh,  those  are  the  doilies 
submitted  in  our  last  needlework  con- 
test." Here  truly  was  something  new 
under  the  editorial  sun,  and  I  am 
afraid  I  betrayed  my  surprise. 

"  But  surely,"  I  said,  "  you  don't  de- 
cide the  needlework  contests."  He 
looked  a  bit  pained.  "  Of  course  I  do," 
he  responded ;  "  and  the  curious  thing 
about  it  is  that  when  I  finally  reach  a 
decision  my  wife  often  says,  '  My  dear, 
how  do  you  do  it  ?  How  do  you  man- 
age always  to  select  the  best  and  pret- 
tiest ones,  for  you  always  do } '  And 
I  answer,  '  I  'm  sure  I  don't  know,  my 
love,  but  I  fancy  it  is  the  editorial 
instinct.'" 

Now,  while  discriminating  taste  in 
doilies  is  important,  it  is  not  the  elu- 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

sive  thing  we  call  "  editorial  instinct." 
To  me  this  "editorial  instinct"  seems 
to  be  the  power  to  detect  at  a  glance 
the  significant  things  in  life  and  in 
letters  and  in  society;  then  to  know 
intuitively  how  they  should  be  pre- 
sented to  make  one's  readers  listen ; 
and  then,  the  most  difficult  of  all,  to 
put  one's  finger  on  the  man  or  woman 
to  do  the  work. 

There  are  some  subjects  which  are 
always  in  the  public  mind,  just  as 
there  are  some  figures  in  history,  the 
interest  in  which  ebbs  and  flows  as 
regularly  as  the  seasons  come  and  go. 
Of  these  Lincoln,  Napoleon,  and  Lu- 
ther are  conspicuous  examples.  These 
three  gentlemen,  whatever  their  use- 
fulness in  the  past  may  have  been,  are 
now  recognized  as  "  circulation  rais- 
ers "  of  the  first  order.  There  are  other 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

subjects   of  perennial   interest,  how- 
ever. 

In  this  country  it  is  a  poor  day  that 
does  not  bring  to  every  editorial  desk 
from  Maine  to  California  a  paper  on 
the  negro  problem.  Now  the  "  Atlantic 
Monthly"  has  done  its  share  for  the 
colored  brother,  particularly  under  the 
editorship  of  Mr.  Walter  H.  Page, 
a  Southerner  by  birth  and  education. 
One  day  a  colored  man  of  cultivation 
was  talking  with  Mr.  Page,  urging  the 
publication  of  a  series  of  conventional 
papers  on  the  subject.  Mr.  Page  knew 
he  had  printed  as  much  of  this  mate- 
rial as  was  wise,  he  knew  more  of  the 
same  sort  would  weary  his  readers 
and  do  more  harm  than  good,  yet  the 
question  is  a  big  and  pressing  one. 
Could  it  be  approached  from  some 
fresh  point  of  view?    He  was  pacing 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

back  and  forth  in  his  Httle  office  while 
the  eloquent  negro  talked.  Suddenly 
he  stopped  and  said,  "  No,  I  won't 
print  another  line  of  the  material  you 
are  talking  about,  but  I  tell  you  what 
I  will  do.  You  tell  me  '  how  it  feels 
to  be  a  negro '  and  I  '11  print  it." 

That  was  editorial  instinct. 

Most  of  the  really  successful  maga- 
zine papers,  the  ones  that  seem  most 
spontaneous  and  incidentally  sell  the 
best,  are  the  result  of  some  such  flash- 
ing realization  on  the  part  of  an  editor 
that  a  really  vital  subject  can  be  ap- 
proached from  some  fresh  point  of 
view.  Such  men,  then,  the  editors  of 
magazines  must  be,  and  American 
mag:azines  have  been  fortunate  in 
bavins:  a  number  of  them. 

Perhaps  the  most  complex  and  most 
interesting  feature  of  magazine  work 

60 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

is  the  relation  of  a  publication  to  its 
authors.  Of  this  it  is  well  to  speak  in 
guarded  terms,  for  almost  every  hu- 
man being  in  the  world  is  either  an 
author  or  likely  to  become  one  at  any 
moment. 

The  most  popular  superstition  in 
regard  to  editors  is  that  they  do  not 
give  consideration  to  the  work  of  new 
and  unknown  writers.  This  notion 
persists  in  the  public  mind  for  the 
same  mysterious  reasons  that  cause 
generations  of  small  boys  to  believe 
that  toads  give  warts,  or  that  snakes 
swallow  their  tails.  If  authors  only 
realized  the  eagerness  with  which  the 
work  of  unknown  writers  is  scanned, 
they  would  soon  see  the  folly  of  any 
such  idea. 

There  is  no  mystery  about  it.  A 
new  and  untried  author  demands  and 

6i 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

receives,  as  a  rule,  a  lower  rate  of  pay- 
ment than  those  of  established  repu- 
tation, and  rightly  so.  But  more  than 
this,  —  they  are  vastly  more  amenable 
to  suggestion.  They  have  no  fixed 
habits  of  thought,  less  marked  char- 
acteristics of  style,  and  can  be  moulded 
to  meet  the  needs  of  an  editor  much 
more  freely  than  their  more  well- 
known  brothers. 

But  they  ask,  "What  of  all  these 
rejections  ?  "  One  reason  for  them  is 
the  limited  possibility  of  choice.  The 
average  magazine  prints  about  twelve 
body  articles  a  month.  That  means 
that  one  hundred  and  forty-four  papers 
supply  the  needs  of  the  magazine  for 
a  year.  The  accumulation  of  a  large 
number  of  manuscripts  is  unwise,  as 
long-deferred  publication  always  de- 
tracts from   their  freshness,  and  the 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

necessity  of  printing  material  already 
accepted  deters  an  editor  from  buying 
what  may  be  better  and  fresher. 

So  the  skillful  editor  sails  pretty 
close  to  the  wind.  He  buys  only  what 
he  can  publish  with  reasonable  prompt- 
ness, and  while  he  always  will  have 
enough  material  to  tide  him  over  one 
of  the  rare  periods  of  unproductiveness 
on  the  part  of  authors,  he  must  always 
be  free  to  make  immediate  purchases  of 
the  unexpected  windfalls  which  come 
to  every  office. 

This  accounts  for  many  rejections, 
and  for  the  non-committal  form  of  re- 
jection. These  courteous  phrases  fa- 
miliar to  so  many  of  us  are  really  the 
children  of  necessity.  Disgruntled  au- 
thors to  the  contrary  notwithstand- 
ing, acceptable  manuscripts  are  con- 
stantly  being   rejected,  for  precisely 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

the  reasons  given,  by  long-suffering 
editors.  These  rejected  manuscripts 
often  cover  precisely  the  same  ground 
as  others  already  on  hand,  they  are 
strikingly  similar  in  plot  and  setting, 
or  are  written  in  the  same  period. 
Stories,  particularly,  drop  into  groups 
in  the  editorial  mind  —  sea  stories, 
horse  and  dog  stories.  New  England, 
Western,  child,  school  and  college, 
slum  and  settlement  work,  business — 
there  are  countless  classifications. 

Now  if  a  story  chances  to  drop  into 
one  of  the  familiar  groups  it  must  be 
distinctly  better  than  those  already  on 
hand  if  it  is  to  gain  acceptance,  and 
there  is  a  surprising  amount  of  literary 
work  of  about  the  same  degree  of  ex- 
cellence. 

Editors  are  human,  and  it  is  no  won- 
der that  after  reading  three  stories  of 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

the  Maine  woods  an  editor  wearies  a 
little  when  the  next  manuscript  in  the 
pile  proves  a  fourth  story  with  the 
same  background.  It  may  be  thor- 
oughly good,  but  its  chances  of  ac- 
ceptance are  slight.  But  let  a  new 
writer  submit  a  manuscript  original  in 
subject  and  treatment,  and  see  what 
happens.  The  editor,  if  he  is  really  an 
editor  and  not  a  mere  adjunct  to  an 
advertising  sheet,  will  do  his  utmost 
to  accept  it.  If  it  is  not  in  proper  form 
he  will  sit  up  nights  to  smooth  it  into 
shape.  Authors  will  not  believe  this, 
but  it  is  true. 

Authors  object  to  printed  rejection 
slips.  The  printer  will  tell  you  they 
are  ordered  by  the  thousands.  Enough 
clerks  could  not  be  hired  or  housed  to 
do  the  work  they  do.  "  Well,"  the  re- 
jected say,  "  give  us  printed  ones,  but 

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THE   READING  PUBLIC 

let  them  tell  the  truth."  Now  the  fact 
of  the  case  is  that  an  editor  often  does 
not  dare  tell  the  truth.  His  lot  is  hard 
enough  as  it  is ;  he  does  not  court  as- 
sassination. Now  let  us  be  reasonable 
for  a  moment.  Are  all  the  people  you 
know  agreeable,  wise  and  cultured, 
witty,  engaging,  and  prepossessing  ? 
Not  unless  you  live  in  the  islands  of 
the  blessed.  By  the  same  token  do  all 
the  people  who  send  manuscripts  to 
an  editor  betray  the  same  agreeable 
characteristic  ?  Far  from  it. 

Writing  is  a  serious  business.  Would 
that  the  budding  author  realized  it! 
It  is,  after  all,  self-revelation.  Let  two 
men  describe  an  incident,  a  chance 
meeting  on  the  street,  or  what  not. 
One  will  tell  you  a  dull  tale;  the  other 
will  leave  you  chuckling  for  an  hour. 
Both  stories  would  be  competent  testi- 

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THE    READING   PUBLIC 

mony  in  a  court  of  law.  Both  stories 
mieht  well  meet  the  bare  technical  re- 
quirements  of  narrative,  but  one  is  a 
good  yarn  and  the  other  is  not.  Both 
would  be  regarded  as  available  by  the 
authors  and  their  families,  but  one  re- 
veals an  agreeable  personality  and  the 
other  does  not.  This  in  varying  de- 
grees solves  the  mystery  of  editorial 
"availability";  at  least  it  seems  tome 
to  do  so  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
man  in  the  street. 

What  would  the  author  prefer  .f*  The 
agreeable  evasiveness  of  a  printed  slip, 
or  a  letter  saying,  "  Sir,  —  Looking 
through  your  manuscript  I  see  in  the 
person  behind  it  an  insufferable  bore." 
Or,  "  Madam,  —  Your  manuscript,  en- 
tirely acceptable  as  far  as  technical  re- 
quirements are  concerned,  reveals  so 
vapid  a  personality  behind  it  that  we 

6/ 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

cannot  believe  our  readers  will  care  to 
make  your  acquaintance." 

Now  I  am  going  to  use  a  word  I 
hate,  but  I  know  no  other  to  fit.  That 
is  the  word  "  taste."  I  have  read  in  my 
capacity  as  a  literary  dog  hundreds  of 
manuscripts  which  were  so  good  I 
wondered  why  they  were  not  better. 
Slowly  it  dawned  on  me  that  the  au- 
thors in  many  instances  knew  the 
craftsmanship  of  their  trade,  but  they 
were  deficient  in  that  subtle  thing  we 
call  "  taste."  I  recall  one  story  in  which, 
to  create  an  atmosphere  of  superlative 
luxury  around  the  heroine,  she,  poor 
girl,  was  compelled  by  the  heartless 
author  of  her  being  to  step  in  and  out 
of  a  limousine  fourteen  times  in  the 
narrow  compass  of  a  four-thousand- 
word  story.  A  man  or  woman  who 
talked  like  that  would  be  laughed  at 

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As  a  writer  he  wonders  why  his  stories 
do  not  succeed. 

The  man  in  the  street  could  tell 
him.  One  does  not  need  the  editorial 
gift  to  know  he  is  a  cad.  So,  after  all, 
I  am  convinced  that  all  the  fine  phrases 
that  my  literary  associates  use,  tech- 
nique, mood,  restraint,  and  all  the  rest, 
come  to  the  same  thing  after  all.  It  is 
the  personality  back  of  the  manuscript 
that  often  makes  for  acceptance  or  re- 
jection. 

Let  writers  write  less,  read  more, 
live  wisely,  deeply,  and  humanly, — 
make  themselves,  in  other  words,  good 
fellows,  and  with  reasonable  technical 
skill  their  chance  is  good  of  being  a 
best-seller. 

Editors  are  often  charged  with  be- 
ing influenced  by  distinguished  names. 
It  is  claimed  that  they  publish  inferior 

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work  by  famous  writers  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  better  work  by  unknowns. 
Guilty  in  the  first  degree.  No  other 
verdict  is  possible  from  a  jury  of  un- 
prejudiced magazine  readers.  But  the 
real  answer  to  this  charge  is  that  the 
men  who  are  guilty  of  it  are  not  edi- 
tors. They  are  hired  choremen  doing 
the  work  their  employer  sets  them  to. 
This  is  no  place  to  discuss  the  edi- 
torial function,  but  it  is  well  to  bear 
in  mind  this  question  :  Is  this  editorial 
function  an  honest  effort  to  aim  at  and 
hit  as  often  as  possible  a  fixed  target  of 
excellence,  or  a  frantic  effort  to  shoot 
as  rapidly  as  possible  at  the  moving 
target  of  public  taste?  If  it  is  the 
former,  then  few,  if  any,  real  editors 
are  guilty  of  this  charge  of  subservi- 
ency to  a  famous  name.  If  the  latter, 
then  they  are  only  doing  their  duty, 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

for  the  public  demands  stories  good, 
bad,  and  indifferent  from  writers  of 
note. 

The  fact  that  a  famous  author  sells 
to  the  same  editors  the  identical  manu- 
scripts they  curtly  declined  when  the 
author  was  unknown  proves  nothing 
except  that  the  editors  are  giving  the 
public  exactly  what  they  want.  The 
stories  may  have  been  inferior  when 
first  offered  and  declined,  and  they 
may  have  been  no  less  so  when  the 
same  editors  bought  them  a  year  later 
under  the  pressure  of  public  demand. 
So  the  editor  turns  over  his  pile  of 
manuscripts  in  his  search  after  either 
the  good  or  the  popular. 

These  manuscripts  come  in  shoals 
from  every  quarter  of  the  globe.  There 
are  somewhere  between  ten  and  twelve 
thousand  handled  every  year  in  the 

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"Atlantic"  office,  from  which  a  selec- 
tion of  a  scant  two  hundred  and  fifty 
is  made.  They  run  the  whole  gamut 
of  human  interest  and  experience. 
There  are  quatrains  and  two-volume 
novels,  and  the  most  remarkable  thing 
about  them  is  that  they  are  all  read, 
except  that  hopeless,  pathetic  minority 
that  bear  the  familiar  earmarks  of 
insanity. 

A  considerable  portion  of  the  in- 
habitants of  this  country  are  still  at- 
tempting to  square  the  circle,  explain 
the  pyramids,  or  invent  perpetual  mo- 
tion. Some  of  these  contributors  of 
crank  literature  are  amusing,  some 
alarming.  I  recall  one  fearsome  per- 
son, seven  feet  high,  more  or  less,  with 
bristling  whiskers  and  flashing  eyes, 
whose  manuscript  was  an  exhaustive 
study  of  the   interesting  thesis  that 

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Abraham  Lincoln  was  a  reincarna- 
tion of  St.  Paul.  Through  an  inaccu- 
rate address,  or  on  account  of  the 
migratory  habits  of  the  author,  the 
manuscript  never  reached  him  after 
an  entirely  unjust  and  prejudiced  edi- 
torial judgment  had  been  made  against 
it.  The  author  afterwards  recognized 
his  brain  child  in  a  publication  of  the 
Smithsonian  Institution.  It  did  not 
matter  that  the  monograph  in  ques- 
tion happened  to  discuss  the  water- 
shed of  the  Missouri  Valley;  it  was 
his  and  he  knew  it.  He  hurried  to 
our  office  and  charged  us  with  the  ne- 
farious crime  of  having  sold  his  man- 
uscript to  what  he  described  as  "  the 
vermin  of  the  White  House."  We 
were  given  our  choice,  ten  thousand 
dollars  cash,  or  we  were  to  be  blown 
up !   How  little  he  knew  of  the  maga- 

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zine  business !  Any  magazine  pub- 
lisher would  welcome  complete  and 
painless  annihilation  when  faced  by 
the  alternative  of  finding  ten  thousand 
dollars. 

For  weeks  we  came  to  and  departed 
from  our  office  with  furtive  glances  up 
and  down  the  street.  For  a  month  our 
sensitive  nostrils  detected  daily  the 
odor  of  a  burning  fuse. 

Editors  and  publishers  frequently 
have  a  rule  that  contributors  are  not 
to  read  their  compositions  aloud  to 
them.  One  day  I  received  a  call  from 
a  gentleman  who  announced  on  his 
arrival,  "  I  come  not  to  sell  my  wares, 
I  come  for  human  sympathy."  So 
unusual  an  introduction  enlisted  my 
interest  at  once.  Before  I  could  stop 
him  he  had  his  manuscript  out  and 
was  well  under  way.    He  read  me  a 

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THE   READING  PUBLIC 

poem  of  some  forty  stanzas,  each  one 
ending  with  the  eloquent  and  sugges- 
tive monosyllables, "  Ho,  Ho,  Ha,  Ha." 
It  was  an  extraordinary  elocutionary 
feat,  for  he  gave  to  those  monosyl- 
lables forty  different  inflections.  With 
no  offer  of  barter  he  thanked  me  for 
my  wealth  of  human  sympathy  and 
withdrew. 

Some  authors  are  timid  about  sub- 
mitting their  manuscripts;  some  want 
payment  in  advance  of  examination ; 
some  inquire  the  price  paid  for  "good 
poetry";  some  are  trustful  and  send  a 
sample,  like  the  gentleman  from  Indi- 
ana, that  home  of  poesy,  who  sent 
four  verses  and  wanted  to  know  what 
we  would  pay  for  them  and  for  forty- 
two  "  extry  fine  stanzas." 

Some  transpose  a  couple  of  pages 
in  the  middle  of  the  manuscript  and 

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write  back  in  glee  when  the  manu- 
script is  returned  with  the  pages  still 
out  of  order,  proving  beyond  doubt 
that  the  deceitful  editor  never  read  it. 
The  writers  who  resort  to  this  well- 
known  trick  usually  submit  manu- 
scripts the  value  of  which  would  not 
be  greatly  affected  by  the  transpo- 
sition of  a  considerable  number  of 
pages. 

I  do  not  want  to  dwell  too  long  on 
this  element  of  magazine  work,  but, 
after  all,  the  rejected  manuscripts  and 
their  authors  bring  to  an  editorial 
office  not  a  little  humor  and  relief 
from  more  serious  duties.  These  of- 
ferings are  vastly  interesting.  Often 
I  suspect  that  they  are  submitted  by 
some  wag  with  whom  it  would  be  a 
pleasure  to  foregather. 

Between  the  specialist  whose  work 
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IS  always  in  demand,  and  the  writer 
of  habitually  declined  manuscripts, 
there  is,  however,  a  large  group  of 
writers  who  challenge  every  editor's 
attention.  And  it  is  with  this  group 
that  most  of  his  work  is  done,  and 
upon  his  relations  with  them  depends 
largely  his  editorial  success  or  failure. 
This  is  the  great  group  of  occasional 
writers,  some  writing  from  the  fullness 
of  a  life's  experience,  some  making 
their  first  attempts,  some  writing  for 
the  sheer  pleasure  of  self-expression, 
and  other  from  stern  necessity. 

It  is  with  this  group  that  a  skill- 
ful editor  most  concerns  himself,  for 
among  the  hundreds  there  may  be 
found  the  one  bright  particular  star 
that  may  guide  his  magazine  on  to 
success,  the  one  writer  who  may  give 
expression    to    half -formed    editorial 

17 


THE   READING  PUBLIC 

plans  and  perform  the  service  he  has 
so  long  waited  to  see  performed. 

And  in  passing,  it  is  pleasant  to 
note  that  where  an  author  has  been 
helped  and  encouraged,  when  he  or 
she  has,  perhaps,  been  guided  away 
from  mistaken  standards  and  started 
toward  success  by  some  editor,  I  have 
yet  to  know  an  instance  where  such 
glory  and  reputation  as  was  gained 
did  not  fall  entirely  to  the  lot  of  the 
author.  I  have  never  heard  an  editor, 
publicly,  at  least,  claim  an  iota  of 
credit  for  any  author's  distinction,  and 
if  the  truth  were  known,  there  are 
dozens  of  conspicuous  instances  where 
unknown  editors  have  actually  made 
authors  who  to-day  enjoy  world-wide 
reputation.  Perhaps  it  is  because  years 
of  labor  full  of  disappointments  and 
unfulfilled  hopes  keep  an  editor  hum- 

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THE    READING   PUBLIC 

ble.  Perhaps  it  is  that  he  knows  only 
too  well  his  own  liability  to  error. 
Whether  these  things  have  burned 
into  the  editorial  mind  or  not,  I  do 
not  know,  but  I  do  know  that  the 
best  editors  are  the  humblest  and 
least  likely  to  boast  of  their  successes. 

Of  this  group  of  occasional  writers 
the  most  interesting  and  the  most 
vexatious  are  what  are  called  the 
"  one-story  writers."  How  faithfully  an 
editor  tries  to  develop  such  a  person, 
how  he  warns  against  overproduction, 
and  counsels  reading  and  study.  Once 
in  a  great  while,  once  in  a  very  great 
while,  his  advice  is  followed,  and  the 
writer  profits  by  it;  but  more  often  it 
is  not  and  rejection  follows  rejection. 

The  "  one-story  writers  "  are  an  in- 
teresting problem.  They  are  hard  to 
explain,  but    I   will   venture  to  give 

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what  seems  a  reasonable  explanation 
of  them. 

I  believe  that  almost  every  person 
of  cultivation  has  somewhere  in  the 
recesses  of  his  consciousness  some  pet 
idea  or  the  recollections  of  some  pe- 
culiarly vivid  experience.  It  has  been 
moulded  by  unconscious  thought  into 
some  literary  form,  a  story,  an  essay, 
a  poem,  or  what  not.  Then  comes  the 
impulse  to  write,  to  express  this 
thought,  and  it  leaps  on  to  paper  in 
more  or  less  perfect  form. 

Its  form  depends  upon  how  much 
natural  gift  for  literary  expression  the 
writer  may  have.  Often  it  is  thor- 
oughly good  and  has  the  essential 
literary  qualities,  sincerity  and  lack 
of  self-consciousness.  It  gains  accept- 
ance and  the  bewildered  writer  finds 
himself  in  print.  Nothing  seems  easier, 

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THE    READING   PUBLIC 

SO  he  proceeds  at  once  to  write  in  a 
week,  without  thought,  something  as 
good  as  he  has  developed  by  months 
or  years  of  unconscious  mental  incu- 
bation. His  product  is  stilted,  self- 
conscious,  written  to  sell,  and  fails. 
Then,  despite  the  appeals  of  his  friend 
the  editor,  he  thinks  himself  badly 
used. 

There  are  hundreds  of  such  in- 
stances. I  have  a  friend,  a  brilliant  law- 
yer, who  printed  a  sonnet  in  "  Scrib- 
ner's  "  years  ago.  It  was  a  good  sonnet, 
too  (though  I  know  less  about  sonnets 
than  any  living  man).  He  wrote  it 
after  a  month's  cruising  along  the 
New  England  shore.  For  a  year  he 
did  nothing  but  write  sonnets,  but 
never  published  another.  Then  he 
gave  up.  He  said  he  thought  that 
^'Scribner"  sonnet  was  born  in  him; 

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it  probably  was,  but  it  was  all  alone 
by  itself.  He  now  writes  very  good 
legal  opinions,  but  no  poetry. 

Yes,  there  is  something  in  this  the- 
ory, for  how  else  can  you  explain  the 
worthy  fathers  of  large  families,  sober 
business  men,  lawyers  and  coal-deal- 
ers in  middle  life,  who  come  shyly  in 
with  their  solitary  manuscript,  ask  for 
our  judgment,  implore  us  not  to  tell 
their  wives,  and  then  disappear  from 
our  office  horizon? 

Often,  however,  the  "  one  -  story 
writer"  has  proved  a  veritable  liter- 
ary gold  mine.  In  every  instance, 
however,  it  has  been  due  to  the  au- 
thor's willingness  to  act  on  sugges- 
tions, to  cut  and  prune  and  revise 
until  the  technical  craftsmanship  of 
his  trade  has  been  learned. 

The  relation  of  an  editor  with 
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writers  is  not  without  humor,  although 
they  can  be  at  times  what  Mark 
Twain  calls  "  very  trying."  As  a  rule 
the  most  successful  ones  are  the  most 
difficult,  and  the  men  are  quite  as 
difficult  as  the  women. 

I  recall  one  classic  instance  where 
an  author  of  reputation  obliged  his 
hero  to  smoke  cigars  offered  him  by 
a  widow  who  described  them  as  hav- 
ing belonged  to  the  dear  departed. 
As  in  an  earlier  paragraph  the  author 
had  placed  the  time  of  the  gentle- 
man's death  as  eight  years  previous, 
the  conclusion  was  irresistible  that  the 
cigars  would  be  a  bit  dry.  But  the 
author  was  one  who  permitted  no  lib- 
erties with  his  manuscripts,  and  the 
suggestion  of  the  editor  in  regard  to 
this  incident  was  ignored. 

I  do  not  want  to  leave  the  discus- 
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sion  of  an  editor's  relations  with  his 
authors  without  adding  a  word  in 
their  behalf.  No  one  is  less  willing 
than  I  to  leave  in  your  minds  any  im- 
pression that  the  author  is  regarded 
in  any  editorial  office  with  anything 
but  respect  and  affection.  I  have, 
perhaps,  overemphasized  the  human 
aspects  of  the  relationship,  but  only 
because  they  are  the  least  under- 
stood. 

The  men  and  women  who  are  do- 
ing the  writing  for  the  best  of  the 
magazines  are  quite  human,  but  they 
constitute  a  group  of  high-minded 
and  delightful  gentlemen  and  gentle- 
women who  are  serving  high  ideals 
and  with  whom  it  is  a  rare  privilege 
to  be  associated  in  even  the  most  cas- 
ual manner. 

Editorial  problems  do  not  end,  how- 
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THE    READING   PUBLIC 

ever,  with  the  mere  selection  of  the 
copy  for  each  issue.  From  the  mass 
of  accepted  material  the  editor  must 
build  his  number.  First  he  will  select 
his  leader.  This  is  the  article  which 
in  his  opinion  will  arrest  public  atten- 
tion most  quickly.  It  usually  has 
"timely"  quality,  and  has  been  ar- 
ranged for  months  in  advance.  This 
is  the  paper  relied  upon  to  cause 
newspaper  controversy  and  general 
comment  (the  best  possible  form  of 
advertising),  and  leads  the  issue  for 
this  reason  and  because  the  eye  of  the 
casual  buyer  will  catch  it  more  readily 
on  the  news-stand.  Here  enters  the 
commercial  element. 

Occasionally  the  experiment  is  tried 
of  using  a  long  poem  as  a  leader.  This 
is  a  mistake,  as  diminished  sales  al- 
most always  show.  Evidently  the  pub- 

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lie  are  a  little  frightened  by  a  long 
poem.  It  looks  too  literary.  It  is 
astonishing  how  afraid  people  are  of 
anything  they  suspect  to  be  litera- 
ture ;  they  think  it  must  be  dull  and 
pass  it  by.  What  a  pity  it  is  that  this 
bugbear  should  be  allowed  to  roam  at 
large. 

After  the  leading  article  the  rest  of 
the  contributors  follow,  not  in  the 
order  of  their  importance,  but  so  ar- 
ranged as  to  create  the  greatest  pos- 
sible effect  of  variety,  and  to  appeal 
to  as  many  different  interests  as  pos- 
sible. 

What  to  do  with  poetry  is  a  great 
question.  Editors  do  not  believe  in 
placing  it  in  a  number  so  as  to  appear 
as  if  used  to  fill  up  blank  spaces  at 
the  end  of  articles,  for  they  do  not 
buy  poetry  for  that  purpose.    The  ex- 

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periment  has  been  tried  of  grouping 
it  together,  making  two  or  three  pages 
of  it,  but  the  typographical  effect  is 
bad,  and  this  is  not  often  done  now. 
So  it  is  still  used  on  so-called  "  broken  " 
pages,  because  the  typographical  effect 
is  best,  and  it  is  a  wonderful  aid  in 
meeting  the  exacting  mechanical  de- 
mands of  make-up.  The  material 
chosen  must  fill,  as  a  rule,  just  so 
many  pages,  —  no  more,  no  less,  — 
and  these  little  spaces  are  precious. 

The  editorial  guess  is  often  a  bad 
one  as  to  the  feature  of  an  issue,  and 
the  paper  put  first  may  not  cause  a 
ripple  of  interest,  while  some  other 
buried  in  the  middle  of  the  issue  will 
bring  scores  of  letters  to  the  office. 

Having  constructed  his  issue,  the 
editor  now  girds  up  his  loins  for  the 
battle  of  the  proofs.  Changes  in  type 

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are  expensive  and  very  few  corrections 
can  be  made  in  an  hour,  and  the  pub- 
lisher objects  to  many  of  them.  It  is 
unreasonable  not  to  let  an  author  make 
such  changes  as  will  manifestly  im- 
prove his  product,  but  when  he  wants 
to  rewrite  his  story  or  article,  or,  as  in 
one  historic  instance,  to  change  the 
tense  of  every  verb  in  eleven  type 
pages,  the  editor  must  rebel. 

After  the  proofs  are  all  back  from 
the  authors,  and  usually  one  never 
comes  back  or  comes  so  late  as  to  dis- 
arrange completely  the  editor's  nicely 
balanced  make-up,  the  plates  are  cast 
and  the  issue  is  turned  over  to  the 
business  department  to  market  just  as 
if  the  completed  magazines  were  shoes 
or  potatoes.  The  editor  heaves  a  sigh 
of  relief,  and  then  begins  to  make  up 
the  next  issue,  and  so  it  goes  twelve 

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months  in  the  year  with  no  omission 
of    summer    numbers    or    sabbatical 

years. 

Another  matter  of  interest  in  the 
ofifice  of  a  magazine  is  the  relation  of 
a  periodical  to  its  pubHc.  Let  us  stop 
for  a  moment  and  calculate  the  num- 
ber of  copies  of  magazines  circulated 
this  month.  Estimating  their  circula- 
tions from  ofificial  figures,  nine  of  the 
big  sellers  have  distributed  over  eight 
million  bound  periodicals  this  month ; 
only  nine  of  the  thousands  published 
give  a  combined  circulation  of  over 
eisht  million.  These  enormous  circu- 
lations  bring  problems  of  their  own. 

One  publisher,  who  has  achieved  a 
circulation  of  over  a  million  copies, 
employs  an  expert  who  provides  him 
with  the  latest  figures  from  the  Census 
Bureau.   He  knows  the  proportion  of 

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illiteracy  in  every  State,  and  in  gen- 
eral how  rapidly  the  population  is  be- 
ing educated  to  a  point  where  it  can 
read  his  publication. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  conceive  of  a 
magazine  circulation  so  nearly  cover- 
ing our  entire  reading  population,  and 
it  is  doubly  difficult  to  conceive  of  a 
great  public  entirely  ignorant  of  many 
people  and  things  which  are  house- 
hold traditions  with  us. 

An  editor  once  told  me  that  at  con- 
siderable expense  he  secured  the  right 
to  use  on  his  cover  the  portrait  of  a 
popular  actress  by  a  world-famous  art- 
ist. He  printed  beneath  the  picture 
the  names  of  the  actress  and  the  art- 
ist.    "  Portrait   of    Miss by    Mr. 

."    He  lost  thousands  of  sales  of 

that  issue  and  shrewdly  guessed  the 
reason.  In  his  audience  few  had  ever 

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heard  of  the  actress,  and  practically 
none  of  them  knew  even  the  name  of 
the  artist.  If  he  had  called  his  lovely- 
picture  "  Youth,"  or  "  Happiness,"  or 
"An  American  Queen,"  the  result 
would  have  been  very  different.  As 
these  abstract  things  are  known  and 
understood,  there  would  have  been  no 
diminution  of  sales. 

It  is  not,  however,  with  so  great  and 
so  diverse  an  audience  that  the  so- 
called  •'  standard  magazines  "  have  to 
concern  themselves.  But  in  associa- 
tion with  the  subscription  list  of  even 
one  of  these  there  is  month  after  month 
food  for  thought  for  the  mind  of  philo- 
sophic habit. 

The  mild  pleasures  of  conjecture 
are  in  themselves  a  luxury.  It  is  agree- 
able to  be  carried  out  of  the  routine 
of  one's  work,  if  only  for  a  moment,  to 

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wonder  what  manner  of  place  Rabbit 
Hash,  Kentucky,  may  be,  for  it  is  from 
this  appetizing  post-office  that  a  sub- 
scriber writes. 

The  old-fashioned  subscriber  who 
"stops  his  paper"  exists  to-day,  and 
his  letters  of  angry  protest  must  be 
answered.  It  seems  to  be  very  difficult 
for  many  people  to  realize  that  a  well- 
conducted  magazine  has  no  editorial 
bias.  No  matter  what  the  editor's  per- 
sonal opinions  may  be,  he  tries  to  keep 
his  columns  open  to  the  fair  discus- 
sion of  both  sides  of  every  big  ques- 
tion. 

The  publication  of  any  paper  on 
such  subjects  as  "Woman  Suffrage" 
or  "  Vivisection"  will  swell  the  editor's 
mail  for  weeks,  and  the  letters  are 
not  unwelcome.  Many  suggestions  of 
value  come,  and  how  can  an  editor 

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THE    READING   PUBLIC 

know  if  he  pleases  or  displeases  his 
readers  unless  they  tell  him? 

The  same  article  will  be  interpreted 
by  readers  in  exactly  opposite  ways. 
One  irate  gentleman  will  attack  the 
editor  for  being  anti-Catholic ;  an- 
other will  detect  evidence  in  the  same 
article  of  his  rapidly  "  going  over  to 
Rome." 

As  a  rule  all  such  letters  are  care- 
fully answered  and  an  effort  made  to 
show  the  reader  just  what  the  editor's 
position  is.  Occasionally  letters  of  un- 
qualified denunciation  reach  him,  as 
in  the  case  of  a  breezy  Westerner  who 
wrote  recently, "  Your  articles  are  weak 
and  vapid,  your  essays  nonsense,  your 
stories  utterly  without  interest,  and 
your  poetry  is  rotten.  If  you  only 
would  listen  to  reason  and  try  to  learn 
how  to   make   a  magazine,  but   you 

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Easterners  know  it  all,  so  Hell !  what's 
the  use !  "  Such  a  letter  tends  to  a  day 
of  humility  in  the  office,  and  is  a  diffi- 
cult one  to  answer. 

The  circulation  of  such  a  magazine 
as  the  "Atlantic  Monthly,"  for  in- 
stance, is  built  up  in  quite  a  different 
manner  from  that  of  more  popular  pe- 
riodicals. The  publishers'  problem  is 
to  find  the  largest  number  of  people 
who  will  care  for  the  magazine,  not  to 
make  a  magazine  to  suit  the  taste  of 
the  largest  possible  number  of  peo- 
ple. To  this  end  they  try  to  put  it 
into  the  hands  of  as  many  people  as 
possible  for  trial  subscriptions  at  a 
nominal  price.  For  this  purpose  they 
frequently  use  the  alluring  coin-card 
with  a  neatly  cut  hole  for  a  half-dollar 
and  an  attractive  red  label  to  paste 
over  it. 

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THE   READING  PUBLIC 

These  coin-cards  return  with  won- 
derful contents.  One  affluent  gentle- 
man sent  a  twenty-dollar  gold-piece  by- 
mistake,  and  its  return  was  a  heroic 
instance  of  business  virtue.  An  attrac- 
tive young  woman  from  Peoria  sent 
her  photograph  neatly  framed  in  the 
card  and  asked  if  it  would  be  accepted 
for  three  issues  of  the  magazine. 

One  gets  very  human  little  flashes 
of  life  from  subscribers'  letters.  Every 
editor  and  publisher  receive  hundreds 
of  letters,  many  of  them  betraying  a 
pathetic  desire  for  self-expression.  It 
is  flattering  to  be  taken  into  a  reader's 
confidence,  but  how  can  you  answer 
such  a  letter  as  this :  — 

"  The  November  '  Atlantic  '  came 
here  all  right,  and  when  my  mother 
and  father  called  one  pleasant  after- 
noon she  took  it  home.  I  forget  what 

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I  said  on  my  postal,  and  do  not  know 
how  long  I  shall  be  here,  but  I  think 
it  will  be  safe  to  send  it  here  until  you 
hear  from  me  to  the  contrary.  Win- 
ter is  coming,  and  however  much  my 
mother  may  miss  me  she  would  not 
wish  me  to  be  at  home  now.  Why  I 
am  so  sensitive  to  the  cold  I  do  not 
know,  but  I  am,  and  the  house  that 
has  been  my  home  ever  since  I  was  a 
child,  even  if  I  have  been  away  more 
than  (or  about)  two  years  at  a  time, 
was  built  between  forty-five  and  fifty 
years  ago,  and  is  only  warm  in  the 
two  rooms  where  the  stoves  are.  My 
sleeping-room  has  the  same  air-tight 
stove  in  it  that  was  in  the  sitting-room 
when  I  was  a  child,  and  if  at  home,  I 
have  a  fire  in  it  night  and  morning  in 
cool  weather.  One  day  last  winter 
(January?)  it  was  so  warm  that  I  did 

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not  need  a  fire,  but  that  was  a  great 
exception.  The  main  part  of  the  house 
has  twelve  good-sized  rooms  and  a  Ht- 
tle  square  room  over  the  front  entry ; 
then  there  is  the  'L'  with  four  or  five 
rooms,  and  only  my  father  and  mother 
for  occupants  by  day,  and  my  brother 
in  addition  nights  and  mornings.  My 
father  is  one  of  a  pair  of  twins,  eighty- 
five  years  old,  and  my  mother  is  eighty- 
four.  Their  sleeping-room  opens  into 
the  sitting-room  and  into  the  summer 
dining-room  and  winter  general-utility 
room.  The  house  was  painted  in  the 
autumn,  but  the  blinds  are  dispersed 
throughout  the  house,  so  we  must  trust 
that  all  will  get  through  the  winter  all 
right,  but  it  does  seem  as  though  there 
could  be  more  than  two  or  three  people 
in  a  sixteen- or  seventeen-room  house." 
This  letter  I  confess  to  be  an  ex- 
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treme  example,  but  magazine  readers 
are  very  varied  in  character. 

On  the  back  of  a  poem  I  once  found 
this  list  of  housewifely  duties  jotted 
down  by  the  writer :  — 

Brown  and  white  silk  Get  up  laundry 

Brown  plush  Post  bills 

Black  and  white  seersucker  Write  for  samples 

Send  gloves  to  be  cleaned  Stitch  apron 

Chicken  Telephone 

Creamed  potatoes  Water  plants  and  fix  bird 

Spinach  Wash  spinach 

Cranberries  Steam  the  chicken 

Baked  apples  and  cream  Make  cranberry  jelly. 

Clean  upstairs 

Truly  a  nice  sort  of  person  this,  and 
how  much  better  this  list  made  me  like 
her  than  the  perusal  of  her  poetry. 

A  Missouri  farmer's  wife  takes  the 
magazine  and  pays  for  it  in  four  in- 
stallments as  her  accumulated  egg- 
money  will  permit.  A  Nantucket  fish- 
erman sent  thirty-five  cents  in  stamps 
every  month   for   the   current   issue. 

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THE   READING   PUBLIC 

This  he  did  for  twenty  years,  and  when 
death  claimed  this  faithful  reader,  and 
we  no  longer  received  his  quaintly 
written  monthly  letter,  the  office  felt 
a  distinct  sensation  of  personal  loss. 

A   Montana  sheep-herder  takes  it 
because  it  is  a  "  readable  proposition." 
He   was    immortalized   by    Professor 
Bliss  Perry  in  the  "  Jack  Rabbit  Son- 
net" which  some  of  you  may  recall. 
A  Wisconsin  banker  writes  that  he    | 
"  always  thought  the  '  Atlantic '  a  high-    | 
brow  publication,  but  I  like  it  and  I  've    i. 
one  high  brow  and  one  low  one."  '■ 

With  more  readers  come  greater 
responsibilities.  I  hope  you  will  not 
receive  the  impression  that  the  Amer- 
ican magazine  is  a  very  spineless  sort 
of  thing.  I  have  denied  it  "  editorial 
policy,"  and  I  think  rightly  in  the  old- 
fashioned  sense  of  the  term,  but  the 

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standard  magazines  have  been  busy  of 
late  years  in  divers  good  causes. 

Much  of  the  most  radical  academic 
thought  of  the  day  has  appeared  be- 
tween their  covers.  They  have  at- 
tacked the  defects  in  our  schools  and 
colleges ;  they  have  pleaded  for  our 
forests;  they  have  steadfastly  stood 
for  the  cause  of  peace;  and  only  re- 
cently the  "Atlantic"  was  daring 
enough  to  criticize  the  manners  of 
the  rising  generation. 

Despite  the  very  stern  commercial 
consideration  which  they  have  to  meet, 
despite  the  fact  that  they  are  all,  in 
the  last  analysis,  "  business  proposi- 
tions," they  have  given,  I  think,  a 
fairly  good  account  of  themselves. 

And  now  a  word  in  behalf  of  my 
friend  the  editor. 

lOO 


THE   READING   PUBLIC 

A  popular  conception  of  him  is 
either  as  a  grim  ogre  deHghting  in 
the  discomfiture  of  aspiring  authors, 
or  as  a  man  with  no  ideals  pandering 
to  the  most  unworthy  tastes  of  the 
reading  public. 

He  is  neither.  The  editors  I  have 
known  have  been  gentlemen  earnestly 
engaged  in  what  they  regard  as  a  dig- 
nified profession,  honestly  trying  to 
meet  the  demands  of  a  very  exacting 
position.  For  the  most  part  they  try 
to  make  their  publications  reflect  as 
far  as  possible  the  best  in  the  life  of 
the  people  they  reach. 

Few  are  actuated  by  business  mo- 
tives. The  owners  of  publications  are 
editors  only  in  rare  instances,  and  in 
every  publication  office  which  has  any 
standing  at  all  the  business  depart- 
ment has   little   or   no  control   over 

lOI 


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the  editorial  policy  of  the  publica- 
tion. 

The  making  of  a  magazine  is  a  la- 
borious and  often  a  thankless  job.  To 
one  letter  of  sympathy  or  commenda- 
tion an  editor  or  publisher  receives 
one  hundred  of  criticism.  But  the  la- 
bor is  its  own  reward  to  one  who  will 
make  an  effort  to  find  it.  In  almost 
no  other  business  is  one  brought  so 
closely  in  touch  with  thousands  of  his 
fellow  beings. 

I  may  be  an  optimist  (I  hope  I  am), 
but  after  twenty  years'  experience  I 
can  honestly  say  that  in  the  mass  I 
have  found  my  fellow  being  an  inter- 
esting and  attractive  person.  Any  pub- 
lisher, I  believe,  will  tell  3^ou  that  most 
people  have  the  humble  (and  now,  per- 
haps, unfashionable)  virtue  of  business 
honesty;  the  average  of  intelligence 

I02 


THE    READING   PUBLIC 

is  high,  and  a  well-developed  moral 
sense  is  conspicuous  sometimes  where 
you  would  least  expect  to  find  it. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  humor  of 
rejected  manuscripts,  —  they  are  fair 
game ;  but  such  contributions  are  not 
the  object  of  ridicule  in  any  office. 
We  know  too  well  the  reason  back  of 
many  of  them.  Illiterate,  unformed, 
and  unintelligible  as  many  of  them 
may  be,  they  often  sober  rather  than 
amuse. 

No  intelligent  person  has  reached 
years  of  maturity  without  feeling  within 
him  a  vague  desire  for  expression  ;  no 
one  of  us  has  lived  a  life  untouched  by 
grief  or  disappointment ;  and  these  are 
the  sources  from  which  much  of  this 
rejected  material  springs.  No  editor 
can  open  his  mail  day  in  and  day  out 
without  being  astonished  at  the  num- 

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ber  of  poems  beginning,  "  Be  still,  my 
heart,"  etc. ;  or,  "  Oh  !  heart,  what 
wouldst  thou  ? "  etc.  There  are  often 
found  in  these  manuscripts  the  wretched 
affectations  and  posings  of  insincere 
mediocrity,  but  there  is  found,  too,  the 
patient  pathos  of  old  age  and  the  shrill 
cry  of  impatient,  suffering  youth. 

And  now,  no  New  Englander  ever 
put  pen  to  paper  without  pointing  a 
moral  to  adorn  a  tale  ever  so  dull,  and 
I  should  be  unfaithful  to  a  long  minis- 
terial ancestry  if  I  did  not  do  so  now. 
What  should  be  your  attitude  toward 
those  editors  and  publishers  who  are 
trying  to  give  you  decent  magazines  ? 

Let  me  tell  you  how  you  can  help. 
They  want  you  to  share  with  them 
their  attitude  toward  that  long-suffer- 
i-jg  and  much-abused  thing   "litera- 

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ture."  Do  not  regard  it  as  a  thing  re- 
mote from  life.  Do  not  regard  it  as  a 
black  art  familiar  only  to  a  chosen 
guild,  as  something  dull,  and  in  the 
parlance  of  the  day  "  too  high-brow  " 
for  human  nature's  daily  needs.  But 
share  with  them  the  conviction  that  it 
is  but  a  mode  of  expression,  a  medium 
through  which  we  can  interpret  this 
beautiful  complex  thing  about  us  we 
call  life. 

Turn  from  the  writers  of  cheap  and 
meretricious  stuff  who  are  debasing 
this  plastic  medium  to  paint  for  you 
untrue  and  distorted  pictures,  and 
cling  to  and  encourage  those  who 
would  use  it  (with  little  skill,  perhaps) 
to  bring  about  a  better  understanding 
between  man  and  man,  to  draw  for 
future  generations  pictures  (truthful 
and  unashamed)  of  the  life  of  the  most 

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wonderful  period  the  world  has  ever 
known.  If  you  will  do  this  the  day  of 
the  ignoble  in  letters  will  surely  pass, 
and  literature  will  take  its  rightful 
place  among  the  arts. 


THE   END 


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